Referee leaves international stage after mistake

Jun. 29, 2006. 12:47 PM

ASSOCIATED PRESS

BERLIN — English referee Graham Poll, who showed a Croatian player three yellow cards before sending him off in a World Cup match, is quitting international refereeing.

Poll told Britain's Sky Sports television Thursday that he had considered retiring from all soccer after his blunder, which meant a Croatian player stayed on the field three minutes longer than he should have.

The result of the match was not affected and Croatia was eliminated.

However, the 42-year-old referee said he had decided to continue refereeing in the English Premier League.

Poll said he took complete responsibility for the error. He showed Josip Simunic a yellow card twice but did not send him off. He was shown a third yellow card and sent off after the game ended, three minutes after receiving the second card.

"Certainly what happened a week ago is something I deeply regret. Inexcusably, I made an error in law and most mistakes, most discussion, most controversy surrounds opinion and they are things we can always debate.

"But what I did was an error in law and for that there can be no dispute. It wasn't caused by a FIFA directive or because I referee differently than what I do in the Premier League," Poll said.

Poll said he did not realize he had made a mistake until told about it after the match. Several sleepless nights and thoughts of retirement followed.

"The first two or three days you think about retirement, you think it's all gone wrong, and you start to doubt your ability, but that didn't last for too long. Because of 26 years of hard work and countless games that have gone extremely well — you know it's probably been my best season ever — I will be back refereeing in the Premier League next season," Poll said.

"It's time for me to let go of the mistake — nobody got hurt from the error, nobody died ... What I did was a public mistake but it didn't affect qualification, it didn't affect the outcome of the match."

Poll has worked at the two previous World Cups and was also a part of the 2000 European Championship.

"None have gone right, none have worked for me, for various reasons," Poll said. "We say in life one thing goes wrong it's unlucky, if two things go wrong then maybe you're really unlucky, but if it's three then you have to look at yourself and say something isn't quite right."

looks like only SOME referees and only after to evident and blatant "mistakes" quit ! won't it be great if all those corrupted referrees left ?